Toy manufacturer Mattel is turning to Layar’s Augmented Reality technology to promote one of the world’s most iconic and famous toys: Barbie®.

During the busy holiday shopping season, Mattel partnered with Toys“R”Us Canada, one of the world’s largest toy stores, to promote Barbie®. The promotion objective is to engage with young girls and parents at home, in-store and online and runs in store into Summer 2015.

Scanning the pages of its latest recruitment marketing publication unlocks videos, photos and links about student life, residence, and tips for applying. It’s a great way for potential students to better engage with the materials and learn more about the school before applying.

“Our goal is to create a personal connection while demonstrating the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit of the University of Waterloo, and also provide a glimpse of campus, student life, and our strong academic reputation,” says Lisa Brackenridge, Manager of Digital Communications for the school’s registrar.

The idea to use Layar grew out of a class project in which Digital Arts Communications students worked with the school’s Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment Office on a class project to assess the existing self-guided campus tour. By gathering interviews, creating personas, prototyping and testing, the students developed cases for using Augmented Reality to add a new dimension to the print marketing assets.

“We used this as a spring-board to utilizing Layar to add a digital experience to our viewbooks and faculty brochures,” says Brackenridge. “At Waterloo, we are focused on experiential learning opportunities, and this turned out to be a learning opportunity for our students and our staff at the University.”

To add another level to their efforts, University of Waterloo created unique campaigns for users in the Ontario area and those outside of the area. For those in the area, many calls-to-action encourage users to visit for a campus tour, while those not in Ontario are urged to connect with a recruitment specialist.

“Augmented reality is the next advancement in experiential communication,” says Brackenridge. “By creating a link between our print and digital content, we hope to maintain a competitive advantage and reinforce the University of Waterloo’s innovative reputation.”

Click here to have a look at how the University of Waterloo has enhanced its recruitment materials and give it a try for yourself.

Rogers, Canada’s largest provider of TV, Internet and wireless services, has teamed up with Canadian marketing agency Newad and Parisian street artist KASHINK to create a truly unique interactive experience to promote the Rogers Cup tennis tournament – all with scannable Layar content.

KASHINK is a unique French street artist who paints large, four-eyed creatures with bright colors and thick lines. As her website describes her work, “she only paints men, preferably fat and hairy, looking like badass yet sensitive gangsters, alien-looking ogres, or shamans from ancient tribes. Some of them are gay, some of them are killers, some others are both.”

For the campaign, named “A Creative Exchange” KASHINK was commissioned to paint one of her signature creations on the side of a building on the streets of Montreal, but with a tennis and mobile phone twist.

“Our goal is to have a new interpretation of tennis, and make it more accessible by bringing it closer to Montrealers,” said Lizianne Fortier, Sponsorships and Events Manager at Rogers. “It was important for us to let the artist express herself and interpret the sport of tennis in her own way, without limitations.”

The creature wears a headband and holds a mobile phone to its ear in one hand and a tennis ball between its giant fingers in the other, all while saying “FOUND IT!” over the phone.

Near the ground of the four story artwork is a call-to-action urging those walking by on the sidewalk to download the Layar App and scan the painting to see more. Scanning the artwork reveals a timelapse video of KASHINK working on the giant artwork from start to finish over the course of a few days.

“As the character I created has a very retro feel, applying technology to the mural and merging the two worlds is quite interesting artistically,” said KASHINK.

Click on the image at the top and scan it with the Layar App to watch the time-lapse video of KASHINK at work!

Canada has been a hotbed of Interactive Print activity with newspapers ever since we partnered with publishers like Glacier Media and national papers like The Toronto Star. Over that time, Canadian papers have produced some outstanding campaigns using the Layar Creator and now they’re being rewarded for their creativity and innovation.

Three different Layar campaigns have been awarded five prizes at the 2014 Great Idea Awards, a ceremony honoring excellence in newspaper promotion and marketing in Canada. The awards for Layar campaigns include three 1st place prizes for both Glacier Media and The Toronto Star.

The Toronto Star’s “Go Beyond” campaign – a fully interactive newspaper produced in partnership with Nissan Canada – took 1st place for Print Innovation and 2nd place in the Advertising category for daily newspapers. “Scene,” a fully Layar-enabled magazine from Glacier Media’s Prince George Citizen (Prince George, British Columbia), took home a pair of 1st place prizes in the Magazine and Young Reader Engagement Initiative categories.

“It is a truly interactive print product that drives reader engagement using Layar technology,” said Norm Coyne, founder of Scene. “The ability of readers to use their smartphones to interact with the content and ads in the magazine has taken the Scene PG to a whole new level.”

Another Glacier Media paper – The Peak from Powell River, British Columbia – was awarded a 2nd place prize in the Newspaper Marketing & Promotion category. The campaign encouraged readers to discover the paper’s interactive features through a contest which raised funds for a local hockey club mascot.

“Our staff all participated enthusiastically in the Layar promotion that we hosted as game-night sponsor for our Powell River Kings Junior Hockey Team. They even brought their children to help demonstrate Layar to fans,” said Joyce Carlson, Publisher at Peak Publishing. “Sharing Layar technology was rewarding and placing second in Canada for our entry was extremely satisfying. I’m proud of our staff for coming up with this creative project.”

The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, and Nissan Canada have been nominated as a finalist for the renowned International News Media Association (INMA) Awards for its “Go Beyond” Interactive Print campaign in the Best Marketing Solution for an Advertising Client category.

The paper collaborated with Nissan Canada – which worked previously with creative agencies TBWA and OMD on an award winning 2012 Interactive Print campaign – to create an interactive newspaper experience that brings digital content to the pages of the paper. They launched the “Go Beyond” campaign in September of 2013, allowing readers to interact with the newspaper by scanning the pages with the Layar App.

Nissan Canada contributed 30 interactive advertisements and sponsored the “Go Beyond” campaign. Readers could see photographs morph into videos, videos of their favorite columnists and even a behind-the-scenes look at the construction of a new aquarium. Additionally, a contest provided users with the chance to win a $3,000 travel voucher.

The results of the campaign were a huge success, producing lots of encouraging reactions from readers. The well crafted and positioned calls-to-action in the Toronto Star created a 2,200% boost in Layar App downloads in Canada above the daily average. Of those that scanned a page, an unprecedented 95% clicked-through and interacted with the content, and 20% went on to scan content again in the 3 days following the campaign.

“It was important that the audience had the opportunity to participate in an augmented newspaper that leveraged the technology to provide a deeper connection to the content,” said Tami Coughlan, Associate Director of the Toronto Star’s Integrated Solutions Team in an article on INMA.org.

“We wanted to create anticipation for what was coming next and create motivation to look for the clues throughout the paper that uncovered deeper stories, videos, interactive games, and animations,” she added.

We’re crossing our fingers for the Toronto Star’s campaign. Lots of hard work went into this project, and it would be great to see a second Interactive Print campaign in Canada be rewarded for its efforts.